Dawn of the Dead

We've recently had Undead, Cabin Fever and 28 Days. Now writer James Gunn (Scooby Doo) and first-time director Zack Snyder return to the inspiration of George Romero's 1978 classic of the same name, a movie set in a suburban shopping mall besieged by flesh-eating zombies. This remake has traces of the original, and its share of tense moments and black jokes, but it's never really disturbing: there's not the visceral shock value or the dark satire of Romero.

The film never actually uses the word zombie, and never spells out how these circumstances have arisen - what we are shown is the effects of a rapidly spreading virus passed on by a bite. It destroys the individual identity of its victims and transforms them into members of a voracious, single-minded, bloodthirsty mob.

There's a nice, suspenseful opening, and a striking, swift, jagged montage of newsreel footage and TV broadcasts depicting the devastation taking place around the country, to the sounds of Johnny Cash singing The Man Comes Around - if you want a voice for the soundtrack of the apocalypse, he's the perfect choice.

The first figure we see coming to terms with what has happened is Ana (Sarah Polley), a Milwaukee nurse. After spending a long day in hospital, noting that a patient has been been transferred to intensive care after being admitted with a mysterious bite, she makes her way home. She misses, for various reasons, further intimations of the horror that's about to break, until she wakes up the next morning to find the evidence well and truly in front of her.

Soon, Ana is on the run: she takes her place among a small band of non-zombies who gather in a local shopping mall and try and defend themselves against the gathering hordes. There are, of course, divisions within the group, and the movie soon becomes a simple matter of who's going to be eliminated, and how: the blood lust raging outside the mall is reflected by the growing brutality among the human survivors.

The inventiveness of the opening montage is recaptured in the film's final moments, which take place during the credits - this is a movie that rewards those who stay until the lights come up.